Seriously, I had to read the article to realize that there's even a "2012" in there.

The graphic design is utter bullshit. Is that the best you could come up with? "Ey-oop mite, t'Olympics 'appen in 2012, roit, so let's mike thet the lowgow!" A country with 1000 years of tradition and glory, and you couldn't maybe just put on a fucking manticore, or a knight, or a galleon, or a pint of beer, or Ena Sharples?

How is Ena Sharples not English enough to represent the 2012 Olympics?

The article above also notes a graphic design flub that I saw, but couldn't put into words myself (since my only real experience with graphic design is having sex [if you call it that] with a graphic design student): the font for "London" commits the cardinal sin of combining straights and circles.

I mean, fuck! Look at these pictures! Does that font make this look like the capital of glorious Brittania, the last world-spanning empire? - or does it instead make the country look like some central Asian backwater where the entire population suffers from the neurological after-effects of goitre and lead poisoning?

Cost to the UK taxpayer to subsidize the jackboot of Fascism? Ten billion quid. They are paying ten billion quid to enslave themselves under a new corporate plutocracy.

Now listen up you stupid English fucks.

My father volunteered to fly in a fucking bucket of bolts over Germany, shot at by big flak guns, at night, in a tiny little cabin with a small window. One time they got their front landing gear shot off. Another time the bomb bay got hit and the destroyed equipment meant they had to land with all their bombs still loaded. Another time, after landing, he lifted up his seat to find out that the fuselage underneath it had been blown away. And then there was the time his plane lost 2 engines and he ended up over a German airbase at dawn, under attack by 3 ME262s.

He volunteered to do this shit, to save your shitty little country from the Nazis, and you reward the world with this garbage? A totalitarian state with mutant sperm mascots, where all freedom of speech has been handed over to the corporations?

Fuck you, England*. Fuck you*, fuck yourselves*, nobody from my family is ever going to volunteer to help you out ever again.

Plus your food and beer is too fucking expensive, given what I get for the money. 6 pounds for a fucking pint you'd think they could use a fucking fridge, and 10 pounds for a shitty meal of sheep grogans you think they'd be able to include a fucking vegetable.

* - note that this doesn't include Scotland or Northern Ireland. Or Wales I guess. Or Man. Or probably Guernsey. But I do also specifically fucking hate Jersey, the tax-dodging cunts.**

** - But not Jimmy Carr, he's funny. Seriously, if the UK spends 10 billion pounds on this bullshit, then I applaud Jimmy Carr for not paying any taxes. At least now he can say he's not to blame for the fucking 2012 London Olympics.

Friday, November 7, 2014

I see that a certain Ayn Rand-based newsletter run by a certain smug odious bastard is still advising its subscribers to sell US equities and raise cash.

Their call is not based on any sort of economic data, freely available with superior commentary from a place like Bespoke or Bill McBride or NDD; instead, their call seems to be entirely based on a half-baked political position derived from the works of a bitter, narcissistic welfare-bum from Russia.

This got me to wondering.

Could I, myself, contribute to the diversity of the universe of politico-economic discourse, by inventing my own investment philosophy based on the works of a sci-fi author?

Who would be a good author to base my investment decisions on?

Isaac Asimov? Well, he'd probably suggest investing in robots and computers and spaceships, and the progress of man and the perfectibility of society and so on. Then again, he was a bit of an empiricist, and the whole point of this exercise is to figure out an investment strategy that requires no use of data, empiricism, reasoning or intelligent thought. So he's unfortunately out.

Robert A. Heinlein? Good guy, but I think not sufficiently differentiated from Ayn Rand to really create an impact. Plus, militaristic warrior societies have a surprisingly low productivity growth and security of capital.

Philip K. Dick? Well, now I'd have to base my investment decisions on the Gnostic theory that the entire world is an illusion created by Satan to lead people away from God's grace, and that we're actually still living in 3rd-century Rome. It's a little too radical.GRR Martin? Um... basing investment decisions upon an ethical imperative of "rape and kill everyone you can, have regular sex with your sister, and in the end everyone dies gruesomely" would be... difficult. I mean, Lockheed Martin and GE are okay stocks and all, but....

Michael Moorcock? Bloody anarchist. Next.

JRR Tolkien? Okay, we're getting somewhere. I'm fairly certain Tolkien would advocate a market-overweight position in mead and rich cakes, which is a good idea I think. Plus the whole mound of gold in the center of a mountain thing, that'll lure in the goldbugs.

If I were a short-term commodity trader having a ball shorting commodities right now, the following 4 charts would give me pause for concern:

I would be concerned that gold in CAD (or in an ex-US basket generally) has already broken through the lower Bollinger, yet gold has failed to break down ex-US. That would suggest that a "gold goes to $0" thesis is wrong, at least in the short term.

I would be concerned that copper has completely failed to break below $3. That would suggest that the "commodities enter a secular bear market" thesis is wrong, at least in the short term.

I would be concerned that steel has utterly failed to break down for 3 years now. That would suggest that the "China enters a secular bear market" thesis is wrong, at least in the short term.

And I would be quite concerned that oil made a larger drop in early October on increased volume, but has managed only a comparatively miniscule drop since October 13th despite much higher volume. That would suggest that the oil downmove has run out of steam, at least in the short term. When you increase volume in a downmove, the downmove is supposed to gather steam, not slow down.

A commodity secular bear market, if one develops, will take a decade to play out. It will not be over by Xmas.

I would also expect a commodity secular bear market to play out in cotton, grains, zinc and other honest commodities - not just the sexy crap that amateur basement hedge-fund clowns trade via ETFs.

Now before the goldbugs get all hoity-toity about these 20% upmoves from the lows, they should ge reminded that all that's happened so far this morning is the miners have taken back the share price collapses that followed gold's breakdown last Friday. They've done so despite only a 1% upmove in the price of gold.

Those share price collapses we saw over the past week were quite violent, and maybe the price moves were exacerbated by an especially dismal collapse of faith. And a sudden illiquidity as everyone moved to the sell side of the boat.

Or maybe it was a short frenzy, and the shorts will today decide to book profits and go home. For a while.

All I'm saying here is you don't buy junior miners in a downtrending gold market based on a Friday morning pre-10AM surge. At best this will give newsletter writers the opportunity to spend the weekend trying to figure out whether this was "The Bottom", or whether instead this is a golden opportunity to unload at 20% higher than the prices on Wednesday.

Which do you think they'll do?

Stay tuned to find out! Wow, this is one heck of a cliffhanger!

I suspect, btw, that the short position on junior miners was far larger than the total market cap of the junior miners, and someone did the math yesterday morning and decided to squeeze. Thus the incomprehensible buying spikes that we saw in the by-the-minute charts yesterday, around 1:30-2PM.

And I also still suspect that there's no way gold goes to $1050 by the end of this year. But a sudden fear of Goldman's pronouncement coming true was probably a big motivation for the past week's illiquid selling.

The problem with the above, though, is that a snapback in the short-term momentum will not necessarily cause any change in the medium-term momentum.

Pedro Villagran-Garcia, President and CEO of Tamino Minerals, Inc., said, "Our differentiated approach toward exploring for Mexico’s Natural Resources has made effect in the Market already. Our Board of Directors is undertaking this review to identify the best way to maximize the value of our assets for our stakeholders given our current financial position and market dynamics in the Mining Exploration Industry."

Has made effect in the market already? Wow! Tell me more!

The company is still negotiating an ongoing financing with a very reputable institutional entity.

My god! You're not simply negotiating an ongoing financing with any old institutional entity? You're going all out and negotiating with a very reputable one? This sounds fantastic! A winning strategy for sure! Tell me more!

In particular, the focus is on: Copper and Silver Porphyries, epithermal Gold and Silver, Iron Ore and Baryte.

Man, that's a wide focus! I like to call that "leaving no stone unturned"! Success is just around the corner!

Might I suggest, though, that you expand your focus yet further to include coal, lead, phosphate, gravel, jade, marble, salt, diamonds, asbestos, uranium, chalk, mica, potash, rare earths, tin, chromite, limestone, diatomaceous earth, industrial grinding sand, gypsum, clay, and guano? I mean, it would be a shame to lose out on a perfectly good gravel pit because of a focus on copper, silver, gold, iron ore and barite!

Silver demand continues to rise with supply lagging behind, pushing the price of Silver up over 200% in the past 10 years.

[checks chart]

My god, you're right! The price of silver has gone up over 200% in the past ten years! Hot damn, this is a guaranteed home run! I mean, assuming you've already found a silver deposit! Which I'm sure you have!

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov. 6, 2014) -Asanko Gold Inc. ("Asanko" or the "Company") (TSX:AKG)(NYSE MKT:AKG) is pleased to provide a construction update on its fully funded and permitted Phase 1 project of the Asanko Gold Mine ("AGM" or the "Project") in Ghana. Phase 1 is expected to produce 200,000 ounces of gold per annum at steady state starting in Q2 2016, with the first gold pour planned during Q1 2016.

Project construction commenced in August with the mobilisation of the bulk earthworks contractors to site. Over the past two and a half months, construction has been advancing rapidly and is on schedule and budget, with 12% of the overall project complete. The Company has created a photo gallery on its website, including video footage of construction activity. For the latest videos and photographs, please visit http://www.asanko.com/s/PhotoGallery.asp.

Peter Breese, Asanko's President and CEO commented: "It is very satisfying for all of our employees and stakeholders to see the Asanko Gold Mine taking shape with construction activity proceeding on schedule and on budget.

"The next key milestone for the Company will be the release of the optimized mine plan, updated mineral reserves and associated operating costs as a Definitive Project Plan for Phase 1. For the past six months the team has been working successfully at de-risking the Project with an updated capital cost estimate, a revised Mineral Resource Estimate and now the optimized mine plan and operating cost profile. We expect the DPP will re-affirm the value of the Project that we saw when we acquired PMI Gold earlier this year." Construction Update Clearing and grubbing of the plant site has now been completed. A portable crushing plant is in operation to produce engineered fill materials for civil works. The mill foundations have been excavated and 100% of the engineering fill has been placed. The concrete batch plant is operational and the first concrete was poured on schedule in October. Pouring the mill foundations is underway and will continue for several months into 2015, coinciding with the dry season in Ghana. Excavation work is continuing on the Carbon-in-Leach circuit base, the thickener base and other plant areas. The earthworks contractor for the tailings dam is currently mobilizing to site and will begin work this month.

Power for the Project is being sourced from the national power grid and a 30 kilometer long, 161 kV line will be run along the existing power corridor to provide the necessary power. The contract for the power line to site has been awarded and the Company is working with the Ghanaian power authorities to begin line construction.

Mining The main mineral resource for Phase 1 is the Nkran pit, located immediately adjacent to the plant site. The pit was previously mined to a depth of approximately 120 meters and requires 21.7 million tonnes of waste to be pre-stripped prior to commencing ore mining operations in Q4 2015. Included in the pre-strip will be 423,000 tonnes of ore at a gold grade of 2.09 g/t which will be stockpiled ahead of plant commissioning.

The Company plans to utilize a mining contractor to undertake the pre-stripping as well as the first year of mining operations. The mining contract tender evaluation process is nearing completion and an award of the mining contract is imminent. Pre-stripping is expected to commence in January 2015. Mobilisation, clearing and grubbing will take place in November and December.

There is approximately 6 million cubic meters of clean water in the Nkran pit that will be pumped out in parallel with pre-stripping operation. Pumping equipment is on-site and being installed and dewatering is expected to commence this month.

Procurement Procurement is 47% complete and proceeding on schedule with approximately US$85 million currently committed in orders and contracts. Equipment and materials deliveries, none of which are on the project critical path, remain on schedule. Importantly, with almost a third of the capital expenditures of the project now committed, the Project is tracking very closely to the US$295 million capital expenditure estimate.

The Company is fully funded to cash flow positive in Q2 2016 with US$228 million in cash on-hand as at September 30, 2014 and undrawn project debt facilities of US$110 million plus a US$20 million cost-overrun facility for total available funding of US$358 million.

Partial Relocation of Nkran Village As required by law in Ghana, dwellings or structures within 500 meters of the final mining pit outlines must be relocated for noise, dust and vibration reasons. A portion of the Nkran village will be moved ahead of commencing ore mining operations, with 88 building structures to be replaced by the Company. The Relocation Action Plan has been finalized and locations for the relocated dwellings are being selected by the Relocation Negotiation Committee for approvals by the Ghanaian Land Commission later this year. Construction is expected to begin early in 2015 with the partial relocation due for completion in Q3 2015.

Health and Safety There have been no lost time accidents on site with 168 days of construction activity and 135,143 man-hours completed on the project to date.

The outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa is being monitored closely by the Company. There have been no reported cases of Ebola in Ghana to date and construction activity has not been impaired in any way. The Company continues to monitor the situation closely and has implemented a number of preventative programmes to educate its staff, contractors and local village populations as well as monitor travel movements of all visitors and contractors. These will remain in place until the virus is deemed by health authorities to have been brought under control.

I wasn't mentioning this stock since it was one of his private newsletter picks, but I remember a month or so ago writing several posts that encouraged nobody-in-particular to strongly reconsider their long positions in silver miners generally.

I was reading through the Yamana board at Stockhouse and saw that there is still a horde of goldbugs out there who've so far skirted insolvency, and are now doubling down on Yamana. Which means the slaughter must continue until all the goldbugs are exterminated.

Not so much on the FR board.

Nevertheless, according to the less insane lunatics on the FR board, First Majestic has been buying back shares and holding back silver from market.

That would be like playing chicken with an oncoming locomotive: does FR have enough money and income to survive a two-year downturn in the silver price? How about a six month downturn?

I think that's what the market is asking. They see First Majestic playing chicken with a locomotive, and so the market is now betting on the locomotive to win.

If the above is true, I don't know why anyone in their right mind would hold FR. It can go to zero. The only reason you would hold FR is because you know silver is going back up to a price where FR can make a profit, and you know when.

But you don't know. That's why you don't double down on a loser - especially one that's going out of its way to kill itself.

Buy silver exposure when silver is going up. Not when you think it might go up: buy when it has already begun going up.

Here is the simple truth - the Dollar has been surging against its competitors; Central Banks have signaled their intention to either keep interest rates low or to provide stimulus or both; and commodity prices in general are falling. In that environment, one in which inflation is not a concern, stocks remain the GO TO asset class. Until that changes, gold is not going to attract sufficient capital flows from serious money managers and hedge funds to keep it levitated. Since the path of least resistance in the metal is therefore lower, that is exactly where it is going. There is no mystery whatsoever to any of this nor is there any conspiracy to force the price lower. Specs simply are not interested in an asset that pays no yield and which requires an overall economic environment in which its price is more likely to head higher.

I guess this is the same with all commodities, and that's why DM bull markets happen alongside commodity bear markets? Is the possible speculative premium really that high?

Anyway, so I guess Norcini would suggest that the goldbugs won't see a long opportunity til fundamental supply/demand tips the scales so obviously that it lures the speculators back in. I guess that could take a decade, if god hates goldbugs enough.

Has there ever been a commodity that experienced a secular bull market while there was a US equity secular bull market, by the way? It would have to be a dwindling commodity, I'd think. Any ideas?

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

I don't know how long the big decline in gas prices is going to last. But so long as it does, both commodity prices and consumer prices are going to grow less than wages. That is good for consumers and good for the economy. It's about as simple as that.

FT Alphaville - how high can the dollar go? A 20% rally in the USD is not implausible, says Nomura. Well in that case I may as well unhedge all my US positions, and screw you Yanks if your market doesn't appreciate in local currency terms!

Kip Keen: How has the junior market met your expectations from earlier in the year - quite bullish with you saying it's time to buy - and have you tweaked your vision at all because of the way 2014 has unfolded?

Rick Rule: My experience - depending on how you count them this is my fourth or fifth cycle - is that because we didn't see a capitulation sell-off in conjunction with what I saw as a bottom in July of 2013 I thought we might escape one. And earlier this year I was saying we were going to trade in sort of a saucer shape recovery but channel with higher highs and lower lows, lots of volatility.

It looks to me now there's a 50% chance of a capitulation sell-off, this year, starting very soon. My experience has been in three prior markets that the capitulation sell-off triggers the recovery.

Nobody sees the recovery coming because they're reeling so bad from the sell-off. But the truth is markets move up because the market exceeds expectation and a capitulation sell-off obliterates expectation which means the market can't help but exceed it.

Well I guess now you're getting your capitulation sell-off alright, good and hard!

You know, by the way, that it really is a capitulation selloff, because gold actually hasn't dropped except in US dollar terms, as I said earlier today.

Let's just hope Russia doesn't dump those 1000 tons of gold into the market next April after their currency reserves have collapsed.

On Wednesday, Kseniya Yudaeva, deputy chairwoman of Russia's central bank, promised to sell the country's gold to fund imports "if it becomes necessary". The worry is that the country may struggle fund imports due to sharp falls in the value of the currency, international sanctions over Ukraine, and a flagging economy.

Russia's international reserves have fallen from $509 billion at the start of the year to $439 billion at October 24, as the central bank has bought roubles to soften the currency's decline against the dollar and the euro. This has raised concerns that, if sanctions continue and the country's reserves fall further, it could threaten the country's ability to import crucial goods and services.

After they've burned through cash reserves, the gold goes out the door next.

That comes about 4-6 months from now.

Then they default on their debt.

Then they do whatever other dumb thing they can think of that involves continuing to piss off the Americans.

That's why I said it was dumb for goldbugs to get their hopes up over Russian central bank accumulation of gold.

What that means is, if you aren't an American the price of gold still looks fine.

For example:

Gold still looks stable in Canadian dollars.

Also fine in Euros, nowhere near the Dec 2013 low. Looks to have bottomed quite thoroughly in Euros, actually.

This gives us a fun opportunity to watch something cool unfold: if the Americans decide to puke every last ounce of gold because they refuse to admit the rest of the world exists and has their own currencies, and yet the price of gold still doesn't break down ex-USD after all that, then there will be a bona-fide bottom made in the chart.

I therefore encourage American white-ass hedge-fund punks everywhere to sell all the gold they have and go as short gold as they possibly can.

Fiscal stimulus in the United States, far from becoming permanent, has always faded out fast, indeed too fast; monetary retrenchment has also tended to come too quickly, at least sometimes. And even when things did run away from us in the 1970s, it was not at all the story conservatives now like to tell, in which central banks printed money to cover deficit spending; deficits weren’t actually big, and inflation took off because of oil shocks and macroeconomic misjudgments, not populist temptation.

But why don’t these things happen in advanced countries? After all, the story — populist politicians should love it when people tell them that printing money and running big deficits is OK — seems plausible. And things like this have happened in Latin America — indeed are happening again today in Venezuela and Argentina. So why don’t they ever happen in America, Europe, or Japan? Why, in a time of deflationary pressure, have calls for belt-tightening dominated the political scene?

I actually don’t know, although I continue to think about it. But it is a puzzle worth pondering.

Sigh.

It's because, in advanced countries, the capitalist rentier class has absolute political supremacy. Basically, they make money on deflation and stagnation, and so that's what they always work to bring about.

Come on, Kruggers! For a progressive, Keynesian economics professor you're awful damn dense sometimes. Was there no conflict theory or Marx in the Ph.D. comprehensive when you went to school? You're just begging to be assigned some remedial reading.

I knew Joe Kernen was an ignorant idiot already, because he's always trying to inject Republican party echo-chamber talking points into serious discussion at CNBC. God knows why Becky or Andrew haven't yet beaten him to death on camera with his own shoes.

The ignorant Joe Kernen: It is sort of the same, same island isn’t it?

Shanahan: And in the North of Ireland they have sterling.

The ignorant Joe Kernen: They do?

Shanahan: And in the North of Ireland they use sterling.

The ignorant Joe Kernen: It is just too confusing...

My god. Kernen really does think Ireland is part of England and uses the Pound.

Dear human resources department at CNBC: tell Kernen to quit surfing the Breitbart.com and Washington Times websites all day, and start doing some real work for once. This arrogant idiot is coasting, and by his own Republican logic he should be fired and go off to live under a bridge for being a lazy uneducated fool.

Better yet, just fire the clown. He's worthless. He is not contributing any value to the show, and he has now begun turning your network into a world-renowned laughing stock.

I'm sure you could pick up Paul Kangas for a song. Yes he's old, but he would never confuse Ireland with England. Then maybe there would be a reason to watch CNBC again.

Alternately, let Andrew Ross Sorkin know that you'll happily provide an alibi if he just happens to, y'know, entirely accidentally not on purpose run over Joe Kernen in the parking lot or something.

For a Canadian like me, that there chart makes investment in the US equities a no-brainer.

Note how the above chart looks just like the chart of VFV.to, a Toronto-listed S&P 500 index unhedged ETF:

How does the ex-USD S&P 500 chart look over the longer term?

That's about a 100% gain in 3 years. Tell me how many Europeans and Japanese and Chinese won't want to take advantage of that sort of strength.

So in an era of appreciating USD, the US market outperforms non-US markets when viewed from their local vantage points. And thus the US wins all the world's capital.

I'm US-unhedged (VFV.to) and Japan-hedged (CJP.to) right now, and man this new era of volatile currency movements is making me feel damn good.

Unfortunately my R2K position (XSU.to) is US-hedged. So I'm wondering what to do about that. No point trying to capture the superior upside of small-cap if it just gets bled off in currency hedging, right?

Monday, November 3, 2014

Bespoke - commodity inputs down in ISM report. And this is precisely how a commodity bear market begets a DM bull market: take off the choke collar of commodity prices, and growth can finally continue unabated. That's why a 16 forward P/E isn't scary.

I am a philosophical nomad disguised in Western clothing, a wondering drifter, masquerading in a suit near a California beach. Sand forms the foundation of my being and its porosity is at once my greatest strength and deepest wound. I have become after 70 years, a man who believes that no belief is sacred. I have ideals and moral standards, but I believe them specific to me. Had I inherited your body and ego, “I” could just as clearly have assumed “yours.”

If so, I wonder, if values are relative, then what are mortals to make of them, and what would a judging God make of us? If a collective humanity is to be rooted in sandy loam, spreading its ideological seeds through howling winds only to root in mutant form at different places and different times, can we judge an individual life?

I mean, you could say that he's simply turned into a bad Friedrich Nietzsche clone - maybe Ragnar Redbeard, maybe Anton Szandor LaVey. But I think it's more likely he's just batshit insane and needs to be put in an institution.

His net worth was estimated in 1995 to be $6.7 billion dollars. $4B of that he made by selling a raft of TV stations to Fox in 1986.

Today, there are 68 Americans richer than he was, not two. In fact, 23 Americans are worth over $20 billion each today.

The seven wealthiest people in the US today, combined, control over 50 times as much wealth as Kluge had: about $359 billion in total.

Gates, Buffett and Ellison today are each worth more money than were the five richest Americans combined in 1995.

And you wonder why interest rates are so low?

Like I've been saying: the rich won the money game. They bust the unions, they cut workers' wages for 30 years, they moved manufacturing to the third world, they reduced their tax load, they took control of government; they now have accumulated all the money. They have won the game.

So now they're finding out that there's nobody to lend it to.

And that is why you have 0% real interest rates.

Read Piketty on capital, and then read Krugman on secular stagnation. The end.

The garbled quality of the audio in the typical Hinterland Who's Who video, by the way, caused by constant re-airing of these shorts whenever a TV station needed to fill space, was what gave Scottish band Boards of Canada the idea of using warbled detuned synths and chopped voice fragments.

Brett Steenbarger - this rally surprised everyone. I know he went back to blogging in the past year or two, I didn't know he was actually providing market commentary. Consider your RSS subscribed to, Mr. Steenbarger.

Quote:

The bottom chart shows the explosion of stocks making new three-month highs vs. lows across all U.S. common stocks. When looking at 52-week new highs/lows, that measure is the strongest we've seen since late 2013. This reinforces the earlier conclusion that the current market has been gaining strength, not topping out.

In short, the data support the notion that this is a fresh bull market leg, not a bounce in a topping market. If that is the case, we can expect further price gains, even after momentum has crested. I will be tracking the above measures and others to update the rally's trajectory.

How would you like it if you bought an equity interest in 70 cents per share for the market price of 20 cents?

Normally most people would snap up on the opportunity. Every dollar you invested is backed by over 3 dollars of real net financial assets! What could be the catch?

The catch, of course, is that the assets you are purchasing are illiquid, of dubious value beyond a thin market quotation, and is managed by somebody that has an impressive track record of losing money.

Otherwise the market would not be giving such a steep discount to the whole consolidated operation.

What is interesting is that the capital fund continues to be hampered by debentures that have a 33% ceiling on the debt-to-asset ratio. Last year the fund breached this and had to pay handsomely for the privilege of obtaining more time.

Management has a huge incentive to not let the debtholders take over – surely the big players in the debenture space would liquidate the fund piece by piece and would not be hamstrung by pesky management or their insanely huge salaries.

The debentures, by virtue of the debt-to-asset covenant, are functionally secured, first-in-line debt, next in line to the margin loans the fund has been taking to fund its incredibly speculative investment portfolio.

They also mature in 1 year and 7 months time.

Now that the whole world stock market has tanked over the past month, speculative issues get hammered the most. Pinetree has been suffering, and its equity has thus gone down to the huge discount over stated asset value that you see today.

New Deal Demoncrat - nothing spooky in the weekly indicators. The US is doing fine according to the real data, which your TA blogger buddy never bothers to consult because real data puts the lie to his hard money preconceptions.

Bespoke - bullish sentiment up to 68%. Meanwhile, Bespoke's readers are strongly bullish. Probably because they get fantastic empirical analysis from Bespoke, while Wall Street Whitey only ever pulls his head out of his ass long enough to listen to ignorant Republican talking points from Joe Kernen.

Calculated Risk - ISM manufacturing index up again. Therefore sell? Are we supposed to sell all our stock and go to cash when the US economy is continuing the grow? Is that how it's done?

This is a tall order, but it is not impossible. A sufficiently determined central bank ought to be able to restore inflation to an economy, and that is the key ingredient of what is needed. But there are huge risks. If inflation expectations were unexpectedly to rise too rapidly, the strategy could end in uncomfortably high inflation.

But "uncomfortably high inflation" didn't happen in the US, so it won't be happening in Japan either.

If this shows any signs of succeeding in Japan, surely there will be irresistible pressure on the ECB to follow suit. If however the BoJ experiment fails, markets may become very sceptical whether there is any escape route from deflation in the euro area.

Bloomberg - China stocks have been going up, you know. I'm totally down with EM cycle theory, my only doubt is whether China still counts as an EM. However, that's one heck of a big doubt, considering how big China's economy is.

You know, I was chatting with a mailpal this AM and realized something.

In all the "gold goes to $0" analysis that I've been unable to avoid reading this weekend, nowhere does anyone actually develop their argument based on any supply/demand fundamentals.

Which I guess you'd expect, considering Wall Street Whitey has continually demonstrated that he has no clue that the gold price is dependent on supply and demand, not on real rates or inflation or US dollars or god knows what else they're on about.

It's especially pathetic when someone asserts a bearish call on gold based on TA. We all know how well TA works most times.

It's even sadder when they assert a bearish call based on a long-term cycle assumption that ignores the fact gold has only had a freely floating price since Nixon.